POPCRU & NUMSA support march to the US Embassy in Pretoria on 14/102011

Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, the largest Trade Union in the Criminal Justice, affiliatedto Congress of South Africa?s Trade Unions [COSATU], Public Service International [PSI]and a member of the International Council of Police Representatives Association [ICPRA], wishes to unequivocally state its total support on the demand for the un-conditional releaseof the Cuban Five from the yoke of oppression and trampling of their human rights by the US government.It?s almost thirteen years since five men were wrongly accused and unjustly convicted.

We have shared the sentiments by the former President of CUBA, Cde Fidel Castro when he made acommentary on the 06th May 2011, after Osama Bin Laden was killed that, ? this [killing] was a dramatic moment of truth of unjust wars waged by US government, but we cannot prevent honest persons fromremembering the other unjust wars unleashed by the United States [also] in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hundreds of thousands of children, who were forced to grow up without their mothers and fathers and the parents, who would never know the feeling of their child?s embrace. Millions of citizens were takenfrom their villages in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba and many other countries of theworld. Those are persons who were kidnapped, with exposure to unbearable and excruciating tortures, and transferred to secret prisons with the hypocritical connivance of supposedly civilized societies?.

Gerardo Hernández, René González, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramón Labañino - the CubanFive have always made us to aspire to speak eloquently against countries which undermine social justice and good international neighbourhoodness.

And the US is no exception!

POPCRU joins the millions of workers of the world in particular and the working class in general to add a voiceon the call for the un-conditional release of the Cuban Five.

We are aware that Rene? Gonza?lez, one of the five men was released with conditions which trapped him tobe located at Florida for three years of his parole, even though it is public knowledge that the condition is unlettered as he has no family around the area, and therefore we are calling for the re-think of such unpalatable insensitivity by US Authorities.

We reiterate our unequalled support for Friends of CUBA [FOCUS] and other progressive forces calling for themobilization of the South African society in particular and other forces within the continent and beyond to join in the campaign, with regular demonstrations until our call is met,

We reiterate our commitment to demonstrate infinitely against the double-standards played by US governmentin the war of terror against the CUBAN government, andWe reiterate our commitment to fight side byside with FOCUS on the demand for the end of the five decades of economic, commercial and financialblockade imposed to CUBA by the US government.

We wish to embrace the consistent messages such as the one from US Former President, Ronald Reagan whichsays, "But the Presidents, now and before -the current and former [Obama and Bush], have known that my ownopinion, is that the original trial of the Cuban Five was very doubtful, norms were violated, and also some of the restraints on their visitations have been overly restrictive?.

POPCRU calls on all South Africans to continue to support the CUBAN FIVE Un-conditional release until this callis met by the US Authorities.

Down with International terrorism down!

Down with International Unilateralism down!

Down with International totalitarianism down!

Forward with the unconditional release of the CUBAN FIVE!

Issued by:

POPCRU National Office

01 Marie Road

Auckland Park

2006

NUMSA fully backs Free the Five Cuban protest picket to the imperialist US Embassy

13 October 2011

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) fully backs the protest march to the imperialist US Embassy against the unjust imprisonment of the Cuban Five and barbaric economic blockade or sanctions imposed on Socialist Cuba by the United States of America (USA).

Our members will join their comrades from the Friends of Cuba Society (FOCUS), South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC) during the protest picket happening tomorrow Friday 14 October 2011, US Embassy, City of Tshwane, to demand the immediate release or fair hearing for the unjustifiably imprisoned Cuban Five and lifting of the economic blockade or sanctions against Cuba. There is no doubt in our mind that the US and its allies imposed the economic blockade or sanctions against Cuban because of its chosen economic development path, Socialism, which is jealously hated by the US. We view this barbaric and unwarranted economic blockade or sanction as a desperate attempt by the imperialist US to liquidate the Cuban revolution and its success.

We will be part of this protest picket to vent our displeasure and anger against Barack Obama’s administration for imposing what we characterize as economic genocide against the Cuban revolution and her people.

The Cuban revolution remains a living footprint that a better and humane world order is indeed possible, where barbarity and greed will be in the dustbin of Capitalism’s history, and have a world order which is peoples’ centred, and puts humanity first.

The South African working class owes its freedom and democracy to the heroic Cuban fighters who perished in combat fighting hand-in-hand with our glorious uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) freedom fighters against the murderous and oppressive apartheid regime. When the apartheid regime was spatially defeated in 1994, the Cubans did not demand our gold and mineral resources in return for their support, but they left with coffins of Cuban fighters who died in combat. When others called us names and terrorist, the Cubans accommodated us and provided all the necessary support for our struggle to be recognised by the international community and which led to the United Nations (UN) declaring apartheid as a crime against humanity. Even today the Cubans, with the little they have continue to support us as we reconstruct our country to eliminate the disastrous legacy of apartheid’s past.

The Cuban revolution and its glorious success continues to be marveled at, and admired by the greatest majority of the Black African working class in our country today, given the reeling effects of the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and deepening income inequalities imposed on our people by Capitalism and its barbarity.

In the words of our revolutionary icon and a colossal of our democracy Comrade Nelson Mandela “as much as Cuba was a home from home for many South Africans during the dark night of our oppression, we now welcome you home to the sunshine of our freedom…..As the beneficiary of international solidarity that helped make it a member of the community of free nations, democratic South Africa is proud to be amongst the majority of nations who affirm the right of the Cuban people to determine their own destiny, and that sanctions which seek to punish them for having decided to do so are anathema to the international order to which we aspire”.

We call on our members to join this protest picket en masse in honour of the legendary Cuban martyr Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, who died at the hands of US-backed captors in Bolivia. Che Guevara remains a personification of Cuba’s greatest ideals of true humanity and selfless internationalism.